


i know it's mad but, if i go to hell, will you come with me?

by cyanica



Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Artist Steve Rogers, Bittersweet Ending, Blood, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Internalized Victim Blaming, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Victim Blaming, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 03:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: Steve Rogers was a boy who loved another, and that made loving Bucky Barnes just a very exquisite form of self-destruction in the same way any other back-alley brawl would be. The only difference, he was not the one who would start them.Or Steve loves Bucky and it’s 1941.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947775
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2021, Stucky Bingo 2020, Whumptober 2020





	i know it's mad but, if i go to hell, will you come with me?

**Author's Note:**

> major(!!!) warnings for homophobia, hate crimes and homophobic slurs,, please don’t read if any of that is triggering to you. check tags for other tws.
> 
> whumptober prompt day 11: crying, struggling
> 
> stucky bingo prompt: looking after each other
> 
> bucky barnes bingo prompt: forgiveness
> 
> title from ‘do you know what i'm seeing?’ - panic! at the disco

The parchment piece of bloodied artistry and charcoal pencil strokes lay crumbled and littered within Steve’s too-small, boney fingers that had now become diseased with a watercolour oil spill of blackish purple and putrid yellow hues across his knuckles, ever since he and Bucky had stumbled back, broken, from the alleyway. 

The paper was torn down the middle, an ugly frayed line separating the two figures within the drawing, all while the rain-soaked smears and droplets of crimson blood had distorted the charcoal and graphite details as if they’d ruined them completely, inexplicably morphing what once had been beautiful, into nothing more than pollution in the gutter when it had slipped from his too fragile, too naive hold.

Steve didn’t want to look at it. 

The sketch frayed and ripped with each shake of his deathly-tight grip, shivering and constantly moving with each hyperventilative breath he tried to stifle and choke down, desperately trying to turn this painfully foreign dreaded anxiety into a more familiar biting anger that he knew how to cope with. The anger was easier, always had been.

"God, Steve –” Bucky was saying _–_ and unlike every other day in their ritualistic lives that consisted of Bucky Barnes picking up the fragmented pieces of Steve Rogers after he’d come apart in back alleys and isolated arcades, from things he seemed he could never just walk away from _–_ this time, Bucky was angry. His bandaged, broken hands bled from the knuckles through the thin fabric and down upon Steve’s neck from where Bucky was pulling tiny shards of glass from his hair, shaking with each new piece he found. Just as Steve’s did while he was clutching the insignificant piece of paper, Bucky’s fingers trembled with each smithereen of the broken bottle he found as if the crystalline debris were mere daisy-chain crowns in springtimes of their childhood.

“I’m fine,” Steve said automatically, familiarly _–_ despite the shaking. This was their routine and they shouldn’t break it. This happened every time _–_ every scuffed knee or broken nose or bruised rib cage – Bucky would mend him back together again like a cotton doll with a needle and thread – like a saint and their gentle warm kisses of greater mercy. 

_"Hey, hold up. I've seen brat before. Guys, this is Buchanan's boy."_

_"No way, the boxer fella – and –"_

The parchment paper in his hands was shattering apart like the broken glass within the alleyway floor, his hair, his lap, but _–_ everything else was normal. Or well, it _should_ have been, if this had just been any other fight – some bully messing with a kid, or a crook getting a little too handsy with a girl –

Yet instead, it wasn't so much as a fight as it was an assault – _a punishment dealt upon him by the Lord_ , they'd said – and there was this frostbitten rot of grime and ice weighing like solid concrete in his gut, in the wake of what should have been a burning, familiar anger at the world's sins he couldn't change with his bloodied fists and broken knuckles, or the ethereal weight of fallen love he always drowned within upon the sensation of Bucky's flesh against his own. 

He should've been angry, Steve knew. Bucky was.

“The glass. It didn’t hit me,” he said, a whisper disguised as something stronger, but the sound of the words caught in his throat and suddenly there weren't any.

It shouldn’t have mattered really. The bottle _didn’t_ hit him. It hit the wall and the fragments rained down like shards of fucking snowflakes in the winter destined to freeze and cut his skin – and after that, his face hurt. His chest, his gut, the back of his head and thighs. There were eight of them, Steve thinks now. His head had been shoved into the ground until he’d choked on gravel, but his vision had been distorted with that of blurry stars like the Brooklyn sky never was, and Steve didn't remember seeing anything else until he saw Bucky.

Bucky huffed a short breath, hot and livid and angry besides Steve’s cheek. Steve clutched the paper a little tighter, balling it into his frozen fist shaking with something agonisingly unknown to him, and the graphite smudged against the trail of blood. A ruined masterpiece. 

“Could’a fooled me, with the way you look,” Bucky scoffed, pulling at another stay piece of glass, setting it down amongst the fragmented collage upon the sofa’s armrest. If this were any other time, Steve might have laughed. Bucky looked just as bad as he did, maybe even worse. His nose still streamed little droplets of vermillion down onto his lap, and the array of cyanic, purple and black hues painting the flesh of his face was not even something Steve thought he could replicate with paint, if he even wanted to. 

There had been eight of them.

_"Christ, check it out. Fag's got his fruit of a soldier to come save 'im."_

_"Watch it. That's my kid brother and he has a habit of sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, but trust me – this isn't worth it."_

_“‘Kid brother’ my ass, fuckin’ fag–”_

“What the fuck were you even thinking? They would have –… If I didn't –” Bucky started again, voice no calmer than it had been the last time, and it reminded Steve of the time he’d first forged his application for enlistment. They had screamed at each other that night _–_ raw, painful, heartbroken screams _–_ enough of the neighbours to bang through the thin walls of their apartment, enough for cheap ceramic plates to be smashed against the wallpaper, enough for Steve’s lungs to asphyxiate and choke his way through an asthma attack. He didn't remember what all the words had been, but their voices had sounded like grenades, amplifying like gunshots against the kitchen tiles up until the blackened night took its hold over Brooklyn, and then it had been quiet by daybreak _–_ quiet when orange and lilac pastel rainbows had filtered in through their frayed curtains, and quiet when Steve had tried again. “I know you have these delusions you can win something you can't, but this is just–"

_"Hey, you dropped your paper–"_

_"Oh–"_

_"Wait, what the f–"_

_"What kind of fairy shit–"_

Steve breathed an unsteady sigh, his heart aching inside his heart and giving him the feeling of an asthma attack that wouldn't ever truly develop into the inability to cease his lungs, but take away his oxygen all the same. The drawing sat heavy and vital in his hands, its delicate sketches coming undone with every movement, and yet Steve couldn't bring his bloodied, broken hands to let go. The monochrome graphite, its stains of copper red, the fraying and tearing of its edges anchored him, Steve realised. "I wasn't looking for a fight, Buck – God, I swear. It.. It just..."

Bucky tore his hands from Steve’s hair, an almost animalistic pained choking sound escaping his throat, and suddenly Steve thinks that Bucky was so irate he was crying. "Don't bullshit me, Steve, this happens every _goddamn_ time! Don't fucking sit there and lie and tell me your fist just _happened_ to find their faces, and then theirs yours – only just about a hundred times harder! I don't understand – _do_ you have a death wish?!"

He was, Steve saw now. The waterfall of streaming, cascading tears glimmered against the light from the streetlights outside their frayed curtain windows, and his teeth were bared, clench tightly enough to stop himself from screaming words he knew he couldn't. 

"I'm not – I-I don't," Steve’s own throat was closing, face wet and head stinging from where some of the stray fragments had cut into his skin, but now he thinks that he was crying, too. Salty tears mixed with the iron lifeforce of scarlet upon his check like watercolour hues, painting an awful watercolour rainbow against the bruises already burning vibrant shades of painfully human ruby and lilac against his flesh.

"It – It wasn't like that,” Steve said, a strangled, ungodly sound leaving his chest, and then he faltered – fell. The parchment crumbled within his hands, and the blood soaked it through. “I just – I dropped it, and they saw –”

Bucky swallowed, eyes red and black and bruised from one hurt or another, today or perhaps the time last week, and suddenly Steve knew he probably didn't want the answer. "Dropped what, Steve?"

It would have been easier, this way: If Steve were just a trouble-making kid who thought with his fists as much as he did his heart, and happened to get his nose stuck in business it shouldn't be. 

Yet, Steve Rogers was simply a boy who loved another, and that made loving Bucky Barnes just a very exquisite form of self-destruction in the same way any other back-alley brawl would be. The only difference, he was not the one who would start them. 

Steve’s hands came undone, opening up to reveal the mess of blood and paper and charcoal inside, forcing Bucky to bear witness to what may as well have been the beautifully tragic catalyst to each broken knuckle, each eruption of rainbow bruises, each smithereen of fragmented crystalline glass amongst soft, blond hair. 

Steve was terrified of what should happen if he let himself love his man in front of him, maybe a little more terrified of what should happen if he didn't – and perhaps that was the problem, the underlying fatal flaw of him, of both of them _._

"I drew it for you," Steve said, a quiet whisper or a silent sob, somewhere in between, somewhere indistinguishable. 

Despite the ugly, torn rip centering throughout the page and the blurred charcoal smudging with dried blood staining the parchment a violent rust, the graphite sketch comprised of delicate pencil upon each line was unmistakable. Two figures lay upon the artwork, bound within each other’s embrace as if, somehow, destined to exist – _allowed_ to. Alone from the rest of the world, the couple were united within the sky, framed around a galaxy of a thousand stars, the constellations unknown, because Steve and Bucky had always just simply made them up. The smaller boy had his hands grazing the face of the other’s, sharing a kiss together that looked like something from the silver screen if not for the fact the two were painfully, distinctively male. 

And yet –

The crimson blood has stained the pair as if they were drowning in it, the charcoal smudged and ruined until the uneven blackness of shadow had looked as if bruises had formed all across their intertwined bodies, and morphed the delicate stars into January snowflakes that cascaded every winter during frostbitten snowstorms at dusk. The pencil work around their delicate features had blurred with Steve’s tears falling from above, almost making it out as if the drawing itself was the one who cried, who mourned. 

Nonetheless, it was beautiful. A beautifully ruined masterpiece, indeed, that Steve wasn't allowed to love.

Bucky shifted his hands to the artwork, touching the sides of the frayed parchment as if to not destroy it further. They shook as Steve’s did. 

"Oh, Steve,” Bucky breathed, his tears cascading down upon the tragically perfect piece of broken artistry, blurring the ephemeral stars into warped pieces of frozen snowfall by the way the water distorted the charcoal. 

"We needed bread,” he sniffed, choosing to keep this gaze towards the breaking image of themselves amongst the stars, so he didn't have to face Bucky who now _knew_. 

Or –

Maybe he always did. Maybe he knew from the very first second he stepped into the alleyway to pick up the pieces he found of Steve cast across the floor, yet instead, simply chose to believe that he and his lover could be people who they were not, as it was easier than being something they couldn’t change. “I forgot I had it in my bag... It was a gift. We’ve never celebrated St. Valentine's before, but I– I thought maybe this year, everything could be different… But – It… It just slipped from my bag, and they _saw_ –"

Bucky’s hands found their way to the back of Steve's head, and suddenly all Steve breathed in was the scent of sweetly coconut body wash amongst cheap vanilla aftershave. His forehead was pressed into the warmth of Bucky’s chest, feeling soft cotton against his wet cheek like a dizzying dream he could melt away in, as Bucky craved redemption for things he shouldn’t have to be redeemed from.

And –

Although Bucky smelled of irony, metallic blood and the grime and dirt of the back alley, he also smelled of _Bucky_. 

"Oh, god, Steve,” Bucky choked on the words, tongue sounding thick and heavy in his mouth as if laced with cotton, throat closing up and constricting his lungs from the inside. They cried and breathed the same damaged air like the broken souls they were, a perfect replica of the bloodied sketches of charcoal and graphite on frayed parchment that they had somehow become in the wake of this unlovable world. “I'm sorry, fuck. I'm so sorry –"

At that Steve let out a mournful, pitiful little laugh that was more of a strangle of air than anything truly humorous. He didn't want to hear apologies, not from Bucky. “Do you like it, at least?” 

Bucky laughed because if he didn’t, he’d sob, yet maybe he was doing both anyway. "Yeah, punk,” he admitted and glided his own fingers down the charcoal. 

“It kinda looks like us _now_ , don’t ya think?”

It’s an awfully miserable remark. Life truly did imitate art in all her agonisingly tragic glory, and the thought had Steve wanting to fray the smithereens of the drawing until there was nothing left but kinder for the fireplace. Their portrait-selves were stained beyond recognition, painted in a browning shade of crimson with indistinguishable grey blurs of charcoal running down the length of the parchment’s shredded tears. 

The two of them in true reality didn’t look all that better with their trembling bandaged hands laced in one another’s clothing, nor their blood spilling onto the other’s flesh like some twisted oath of shared devotion – a mock to the fact that they would never have the privilege of something _more_. 

“That’s fucking sad,” Bucky said. 

“Yeah,” Steve said back, angling his face to meet with Bucky’s, pressing his salty, copper lips to that of his lover’s own. They tasted like each other. “I’ll draw you something else.”

**Author's Note:**

> stucky bingo
> 
> title: i know it's mad but, if i go to hell, will you come with me?  
> creator(s): cyanica  
> card number: 075  
> link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015666  
> square filled: e4 – looking after each other  
> rating: teen and up audiences  
> archive warnings: chose not to use archive warnings + discrimination against the lgbtq+ community  
> major tags: homophobia, angst, hurt/comfort, crying, pre-world war ii bucky barnes/steve rogers  
> summary: steve loves bucky and it’s 1941.  
> word count: 2410


End file.
